Daily deal overload

Just about every day I receive an announcement of a new daily deal site—either in the form of a coupon (like Groupon, BuyWithMe, LivingSocial) or direct sales (like Rue La La, Gilt Groupe, WineShopper.com).

For a while, I signed up for most of them—or at least the ones of interest to me. But soon my inbox became overloaded. There were deals for facials at a women’s hair salon (Groupon), women’s lingerie (Rue La La) and hotel rooms in Chicago (JetSetter).

It quickly became too much of too little that I’m interested in—no matter how great the deal is. That’s because they’re not at all personalized to me. I go to a barber (okay, maybe there’s no barber pole outside but it’s not a spot where customers receive facials), I’m not in the market for lingerie and I already own a condo in Chicago so I don’t need a hotel room.

I don’t want to miss out on a can’t-miss deal, but I also don’t want to be bombarded with offers that aren’t relevant to me. If daily deal sites are here to stay, they need to take a page from Amazon.com and other sites that personalize their offers based on the specific user.

If they don’t better understand who I am and what I might be interested in buying, then I—along with many other people—will probably just unsubscribe from their e-mail list. In fact, for a few sites, I already have.